by Rasika Welankiwar | 5:13 PM January 8, 2010
While putting together the January-February issue, we asked some of our authors and bloggers what they had read — a recent item or an old gem — that they would recommend to our readers. Here’s what they said:
The Enlightened Eye
by Elliot W. Eisner (Prentice Hall, 1991)
A classic book by Stanford education professor Elliot W. Eisner is emerging as a must-read. He argues that little of value can be learned about the student experience, or how to improve it, from quantitative research. The same applies to business customers. Instead, he encourages the development of an “enlightened eye” to observe and interpret rigorously without being confined to the narrow strictures of statistically significant quantitative tests and measures. To Eisner, qualitative research is the only tool for deeply understanding the complicated world of people in organizations.
–Roger Martin, author of The Age of Customer Capitalism
by Elliot W. Eisner (Prentice Hall, 1991)
A classic book by Stanford education professor Elliot W. Eisner is emerging as a must-read. He argues that little of value can be learned about the student experience, or how to improve it, from quantitative research. The same applies to business customers. Instead, he encourages the development of an “enlightened eye” to observe and interpret rigorously without being confined to the narrow strictures of statistically significant quantitative tests and measures. To Eisner, qualitative research is the only tool for deeply understanding the complicated world of people in organizations.
–Roger Martin, author of The Age of Customer Capitalism
Alexander Hamilton
by Ron Chernow (Penguin, 2004)
I’m plowing my way through various biographies of the Founding Fathers. This started when we were having such a horrible time in 2006, and I needed to be reminded that bad situations sometimes turn out all right. That the U.S. came into existence — with a third of George Washington’s troops down to smallpox and going against the greatest power at the time — is one of those impossible things that now we see was inevitable. I’m a Hamilton person myself, and Chernow’s book on him is great. Hamilton had a lot of downsides. He wanted a king. But I think he was audacious in the way he went about things.
–Condoleezza Rice, interviewed by HBR
by Ron Chernow (Penguin, 2004)
I’m plowing my way through various biographies of the Founding Fathers. This started when we were having such a horrible time in 2006, and I needed to be reminded that bad situations sometimes turn out all right. That the U.S. came into existence — with a third of George Washington’s troops down to smallpox and going against the greatest power at the time — is one of those impossible things that now we see was inevitable. I’m a Hamilton person myself, and Chernow’s book on him is great. Hamilton had a lot of downsides. He wanted a king. But I think he was audacious in the way he went about things.
–Condoleezza Rice, interviewed by HBR
Crude World
by Peter Maass (Knopf, 2009)
With this book, New York Times Magazine writer Peter Maass adds his voice to others predicting severe economic dislocation after global oil production passes its peak and enters an inevitable decline — a view of the future that doesn’t sit well with the oil industry. Maass, author of a 1996 book about the Bosnian conflict, writes beautifully about this ugly stuff: “[Oil] is a commodity that is extracted, refined, shipped and poured into your gas tank with few people seeing it. It has no voice, body, army or dogma of its own. It is invisible most of the time, but, like gravity, it influences everything we do.”
–Rob Toker, coauthor (with Alex Rau and Joanne Howard) of Can Technology Really Save Us from Climate Change?
by Peter Maass (Knopf, 2009)
With this book, New York Times Magazine writer Peter Maass adds his voice to others predicting severe economic dislocation after global oil production passes its peak and enters an inevitable decline — a view of the future that doesn’t sit well with the oil industry. Maass, author of a 1996 book about the Bosnian conflict, writes beautifully about this ugly stuff: “[Oil] is a commodity that is extracted, refined, shipped and poured into your gas tank with few people seeing it. It has no voice, body, army or dogma of its own. It is invisible most of the time, but, like gravity, it influences everything we do.”
–Rob Toker, coauthor (with Alex Rau and Joanne Howard) of Can Technology Really Save Us from Climate Change?
Love ‘Em or Lose ‘Em
by Beverly Kaye and Sharon Jordan-Evans (Berrett-Koehler, 1999)
When I was a manager back home in the U.S., I read this book to get ideas about recognition and reward. Later, as a cross-cultural coach, I bought a stack of copies for my clients, mainly Europeans managing Americans. They found it a revelation.
by Beverly Kaye and Sharon Jordan-Evans (Berrett-Koehler, 1999)
When I was a manager back home in the U.S., I read this book to get ideas about recognition and reward. Later, as a cross-cultural coach, I bought a stack of copies for my clients, mainly Europeans managing Americans. They found it a revelation.
Books on cross-cultural management often don’t provide the same level of psychological insight as when authors write for their own country. Love ‘Em or Lose ‘Em reminds the U.S. how extreme its business culture can be, but also — crucially — helps outsiders to navigate it.
–Erin Meyer, coauthor (with Elisabeth Yi Shen) of China Myths, China Facts
–Erin Meyer, coauthor (with Elisabeth Yi Shen) of China Myths, China Facts
Revolution in a Bottle
by Tom Szaky (Portfolio, 2009)
Szaky has written the best book on entrepreneurship I’ve read. This is not the story of a huge exit, or wow technology, or big money from top-tier VCs. It’s the witty, funny, poignant tale of a young Princeton dropout who finds himself up to his elbows in worm poop turned fertilizer on the way to building a pioneering “upcycling” company, TerraCycle. This is how entrepreneurship happens in the real world: Scrappy, resourceful, hustling, flexible, idealistic, smart people take on big challenges by thinking differently, dealing innovatively with crises (bullets whizzing through the Newark office), and learning as they go.
–Daniel Isenberg, HBR author and blogger
by Tom Szaky (Portfolio, 2009)
Szaky has written the best book on entrepreneurship I’ve read. This is not the story of a huge exit, or wow technology, or big money from top-tier VCs. It’s the witty, funny, poignant tale of a young Princeton dropout who finds himself up to his elbows in worm poop turned fertilizer on the way to building a pioneering “upcycling” company, TerraCycle. This is how entrepreneurship happens in the real world: Scrappy, resourceful, hustling, flexible, idealistic, smart people take on big challenges by thinking differently, dealing innovatively with crises (bullets whizzing through the Newark office), and learning as they go.
–Daniel Isenberg, HBR author and blogger
RASIKA WELANKIWAR
Rasika Welankiwar was a member of the editorial staff of the Harvard Business Review.
No comments:
Post a Comment